When members of Congress caved to demands from the insurance industry and ditched their plan to establish a "public option" health plan, the lawmakers also ditched one of their favorite talking points, that a government-run plan was necessary to "keep insurers honest."

As I predicted two months ago, California voters have been bombarded by a group with a consumer-friendly name warning that a vote for a ballot initiative tomorrow would allow "one politician" to "interfere" with their health care treatment options.

Regardless of where you live, you should check out those rankings before selecting your insurance carrier for 2015. You'll find that, just as in California, the nonprofits lead the pack and the for-profits are eating their dust.

If you relied on the Washington media for your news and information about health care, you'd think that insurance companies would never have considered sending policy discontinuation notices to their policyholders until forced to do so by Obamacare.

The federal government may have established Medicaid, but it gave the states the job of running it. Each state has its own individualized program, with different rules and regulations, making federal oversight difficult, if not impossible.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is facing a dilemma. Should he sign a bill that was intended to help many state residents get coverage for cost-effective health care that insurers often refuse to pay for? Or veto the bill because it is loaded with amendments that will benefit insurers?

So much for health care choice and competition vanishing with "Obamacare". It seems as if one of the leaders of the anti-reform crowd, Rick Scott, wasn't a true believer in the value of choice and competition after all.

The health insurance industry's long-term strategy is to move all Americans into high-deductible plans, and they're well on their way to achieving that goal. Once there, you can bet the rates will be hiked up.

If the health insurance industry gets its way, not only will it be able to gut important provisions of the health care reform law, it will put all of us in a forced march into inadequate plans, and, at the same time, into the swelling ranks of the underinsured.

Successful flacks know how to use a variety of public relations tricks to obscure the truth -- being selective in the disclosure of information, for instance, or using statistics in misleading ways. But sometimes that can backfire.

Like many others, I've heard President Obama talk about his mother's insurance problems during her final months in 1995. But I didn't realize until now that the company she was pleading with was CIGNA, the one I used to work for.

Despite its faults, the federal government at least knows when you're dead. That's more than can be said for Blue Cross in Los Angeles, who assigns deceased doctors to customers as 'in network practitioners.'

For some, the system works best when elites make the most fundamental decisions for our society, unencumbered by the trappings of "democracy", and when the population is depoliticized, misinformed, or both.